When the Stars Rule the Mind
by ConfirmTheOriginOfFire
Summary: Two years after their time-travelling adventure, Crono and company find themselves confronted by a new enemy, but this time there is a traitor in their midst! Note: this is NOT another Lavos-comes-back-to-life story. Nor is it a Magus-turns-evil story!
1. Lavos Nightmare

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When the Stars Rule the Mind

by Elizabeth (penname ConfirmTheOriginOfFire)

Author's note: This is NOT another Lavos-comes-back-to-life story. It sounds like it at first, but let me assure you, it's not!

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Crono was playing with a Poyozo Doll when he realized where he was. He looked up and around, and didn't know how he hadn't noticed it before. In fact, he had absolutely no idea how he'd come to be here. The End of Time.

He was sitting against the lamppost where Gaspar, Guru of Time, usually stood. But the old man was nowhere to be seen.

"Hey," said Gaspar's voice, and the monosyllable word echoed eerily through the deep, inert reaches of space, even more so than usual.

"H-hello?" inquired Crono. "Gaspar? Where are you?"

"Hey," the voice said again.

Crono checked the room with the pillars of light. The gates silently emitted the pure white light, with such a wavelength that its flickers were almost too quick for the eye. He blinked in surprise. This situation was starting to get weird, as if it hadn't already been abnormal.

He turned on his heels and ran back to the main room, hoping that Gaspar had returned in the short time he'd been gone. Nobody was there. The lamppost stood alone, giving off that lonely green light, subsiding, and growing bright again. The dark bricks and fences were lit up momentarily, and were almost bathed in darkness when the lamp dimmed. Then the light came back to kiss the platform, and almost as if the inanimate objects were grateful, their colors became visible again.

"Hey."

Crono was feeling more than a little disconcerted now. He ran into Spekkio's room, which had no such lamppost, but did have a mysterious lighter spot in its center, where Spekkio usually sat, stood, or ran in place. However, he was not there today.

"Spekkio?" he asked, answered only by the echoes. "Spekkio? Gaspar? Come on, this isn't funny anymore." Had it even been funny to begin with? More nervous than ever before, he returned to the lamppost room.

A wind picked up and made a strange, almost mechanical wail as it traveled through space. That was odd. There shouldn't be any wind here. The sound was mournful, frightened, and menacing all at once. Crono suddenly felt a nerve shock that caused him to put his guard up.

It was Crono's personal belief, even more so after fighting Lavos, that evil was a tangible thing, with its own wavelengths and properties. If it was true, he was getting those evil vibrations now. The terror surrounded him now, began to invade his brain, trying desperately to throw him into panic. He could only remember one other time when he'd felt this way.

There was a sting in his chest that only lasted a few seconds, yet he easily judged it as the worst pain of his life. He was forced to give a short scream as a small blue sparkle tore its way out of him. It floated in front of him for a moment or two, then darted away when he snatched at it. Crono watched as it sped off into the depths of space.

Ping! That tiny little sound that he'd once heard from the teleporters in Magus's castle echoed far far away. It became like a ping pong ball being smacked around the room by a group of experienced players...sounding its short, high tone from every direction. It tormented him even more than the strange chanting of the Medina villagers worshipping Magus and Ozzie.

It stopped. Just stopped, right when Crono thought his head was going to explode. A few more moments of silence ensued, moments that seemed interminable.

Then an unearthly scream took the one-note symphony's place. It was an all-too-familar noise, one that struck fear into his heart more effectively than Lucca's homemade cookies.

"No...please...this isn't..."

But it was. The cry of Lavos, shared by its spawn. Indeed, it sounded as if many, many Lavos were screaming at once, perhaps screaming insults or death threats at him. The distant blackness of space was poked through, as if it were nothing but paper. Poking through this hole was Lavos's eye! It opened wide and stared straight at Crono! Frozen with fear, he couldn't even scream as it shook space and the End of Time....

*****

When he finally could scream, he woke himself from the terrible dream. Sweating profusely and heart racing, he looked around his room. The Poyozo Doll was on the floor. Crono picked it up and briefly considered holding it close for comfort. He heard quick footsteps up the stairs.

"Hold on, Crono, I'm coming!" called his mother's voice. She burst into the room, wielding a frying pan. "Crono, what happened? Are you okay?!"

"Fine, mother," he replied. "Just a bad dream. Not a prowler or anything."

She lowered the pan. "Bad dream? I didn't think you got bad dreams anymore."

"Well, I guess I still do."

"About monsters and robbers and Rolys, like you used to?" she asked. "You can take them all out."

"That's little kid stuff," Crono said. "I dream about _really_ scary things, like hair loss and fire-breathing chancellors and being lost on Death Peak after dark. _That _sort of thing."

His mother sighed. "Okay, then. Sorry for bursting in like that--I know that you'd take care of anything that might come in here anyway."

"S'ok. See you tomorrow."

She left Crono alone in the dark, clutching the Poyozo tightly to his chest. There was only one way to defeat the lingering fear from the dream, and that was to pull the string on the doll and fall back asleep to the pacifying song it played...


	2. Scared at the Square

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When the Stars Rule the Mind by ConfirmTheOriginOfFire

DISCLAIMER: As always, Chrono Trigger is not mine. It belongs to Squaresoft, and so do all the guys in it…*sigh*…anyway, this is NOT a Lavos-comes-back-to-life story OR a Magus-turns-evil-again story.

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Chapter Two: Scared at the Square

When Crono woke up the next morning, the Poyozo was on the floor again. He picked it up in a cool, casual way. Not in the way he had last night, with fear struck so deep into his heart. Crono set it on the windowsill and made his bed quickly. The breakfast scents wafting up to his room from the kitchen smelled delicious, and made his stomach growl intrusively.

"Was that me?" he asked himself. "I've got one big-mouth tummy!"

He hurriedly changed, throwing his Poyozo pajamas into the corner. The cat curled up and settled down on them, causing a bit of a problem when he tried to put them away.

"Meow!" the cat screamed at him, and hissed.

"But I — "

"Hiss!"

Crono sighed and left it alone, knowing his mother would probably want to talk his "messy habits" over with him after she'd been up here. Since he was nine or ten years old, his mother had drilled him over and over again about tidy habits, like making the bed and picking up his clothes(two things he did not like to do).

He bounded down the stairs and into the kitchen.

"Hi mom!" he said cheerfully.

"Good morning, Crono," his mother replied. "I see you got up on your own this morning. And on time, too! I'm impressed."

"Oh, well, yeah…"

"Anyway, breakfast is ready! And for once, I don't have to heat it up again for you!"

Breakfast was pancakes, toast, bacon, and poached eggs. Crono drew his sword and prepared to spear the entire short stack(which wasn't very short at all).

"No, Crono!" his mother objected. "No weapons at the table, please!"

Reluctantly, he sheathed his sword again. But then he just used a knife to spear the pancakes anyway, and ate them right off of the blade.

"Crono! You've been given the proper utensil, why not use it?"

"Too slow!" he exclaimed, mouth full of pancakes. After those were gone, he used the toast to scoop up the eggs and ate those, then ate his bacon with his finger, which he licked afterwards. His mother was about to scold him for that nasty habit, but her heart melted when he said "Mmmm! Finger-lickin'!"

"So! I'm just going to go see what's happening in the rest of Guardia, okay mom?"

"Okay, Crono."

With that, he dashed out of the house, leaving a big mess for his mom to clean up.

Crono met up with Lucca in the square. She waved a new invention around. It looked to him like a microphone with a flat handle and a large calculator screen on the flat part.

"What's that?" he asked her.

"It's called a dark detector. I actually got the idea from you. Like you said how you think evil has wavelengths? Well, I'm trying to figure out exactly what that wavelength is. But it's tough because everything gives off a wavelength of some sort, and it's hard to tell whether or not all these little white lies kids are telling left and right are actually considered evil. So what I've got here seems more like a lie detector than anything."

"You mean, you've got the wavelength of a _lie_ down already?"

"Sort of. There isn't any evil, evil lying going on from what I can tell, just kid stuff, mostly. No fake chancellors or anything."

"So, if I told you a lie, you'd be able to tell?"

"Maybe. Tell me something."

"Uh…I have a cat!"

Lucca looked at the dark detector. "Okay, this thing must be really screwed up if it's telling me that's a lie…" She flipped it over and typed something in on a keypad. "Okay…let's try that again."

Crono repeated his statement, but it still registered as a lie. Lucca was baffled.

"So much for my brilliant idea," she said gloomily.

"You mean, so much for _my_ brilliant idea," he corrected her, suddenly just as gloomy as she.

They sat on a bench for a while, watching the people go by. "You know," she said. "I think I may have actually forgotten what this place looked like during the fair."

"Me too," Crono said. "Where was Melchoir's tent again? The Tent of Horrors, where was that? The tel — "

He stopped abruptly. It felt like a firecracker had exploded inside his chest. Not with pain, but with that sudden _pop_. And it left him feeling uneasy and chilled all over. His stomach felt slightly queasy too.

"Crono? What's wrong?" Lucca asked.

"I…uh…nothing, I guess. It just…I…" He stood from the bench, legs feeling very much like jelly. "… …I think I'm going to see if I can find a bathroom."

"Poor guy," Lucca said quietly to herself. "I hope it wasn't those cookies I made him eat."

"YOU'VE GOT COOKIES?!" said a voice behind her excitedly. She turned around and saw Marle jumping up and down.

"No, I don't have cookies," she replied.

"Oh," Marle said, and stopped jumping. She looked around. "Where's Crono?"

"He went off to find a bathroom, which he is NOT gonna find. I guess we have to wait here until he gets back."

"I HATE waiting," Marle stated, pouting. "He'd better hurry up and get back!"

"Yeah! And hey, is it just me, or is the ground shaking?"

"I don't know," the blond girl said, kneeling and touching the ground. "It might be. I can't really tell."

Lucca, for some strange reason, picked that moment to glance at the dark detector. The "dark" wavelength reading was soaring through the roof.

"Huh?!" she exclaimed. "What's going on?"

"What is that, Lucca?" Marle asked.

"My dark detector. I'm not sure if it works, but if it does, something very evil is generating dark wavelengths at a great rate!"

"Meaning?"

"Meaning something very evil is doing something very bad at this very moment!"

Just then, the stone pavement cracked and the ground began to part…


End file.
